Mail Online: From The Message Boards

Smells can influence our views - and a particularly pungent one can increase our conservatism and even change our views on same sex marriage, it has been claimed.

In a new study, titled 'Disgust and the Politics of Sex,' researchers say that an odour really can change our mind - and even change our religious views.

The team tested a range of view on people both with and without exposing them to noxious fumes.

'Disgust has been implicated as a potential causal agent underlying socio-political attitudes and behaviors,' the University of Arkansas team wrote in the journal PLOS One.

'The present study tested the effects of disgust on a range of policy preferences to clarify whether disgust is generally implicated in political conservatism across public policy attitudes or is uniquely related to specific content domains.'

The team say their unusual research proved the theory.

'The study showed that exposure to a disgusting odor increased endorsement of socially conservative attitudes related to sexuality,' they wrote.

'In particular, there was a strong and consistent link between induced disgust and less support for gay marriage.'

Mail Online.

Amusing, but only 57 people took part in this study, so it's absolute junk science.

But I think you may have guessed that.

I think most people are intelligent enough to make decisions on major issues such as the acceptance or otherwise of homosexuality, Biblical truth etc without needing to be influenced by SMELLS. Then again, I detect a fishy odour here...was this study backed by the Gay Lobby perchance?

The stench of liberals, post-modernists and the EU can all have this effect on people.

Where do they put the butter?

Stupid article, and homosexuals are homosexual not gay.

We associate bad smells w unwashed (we live in America...no excuse for no daily shower) and uncaring, uneducated folk. It's human nature. If we feel the majority of the unwashed and uneducated r from minority which votes liberal for the free handouts, there you go. And conservatives tend to be educated and employed. Two reasons we keep our bodies, our children, our home, our yard clean and well kempt. People do this to themselves then holler "victim" or "discrimination."

Huh. And here I thought that stinky smell sending people running to conservatism was Obama

Let me get the straight; the more you like smelly things, the more gay you are?

A Liberal is nothing more that a Conservative who hasn't gotten mugged yet! As you get older you realize that people suck!

I'm conservative, and I've never been mugged. My sense of right and wrong comes from God and His word, not what I smelled that day.

Really? I always thought it was my intelligence that made me conservative.